


Marks on Monochrome

by Shirokokuro



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Drabble, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Jack is sad--a jerk--but still sad, Tim is sadder, but it's just an allusion and not anything explicit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-16
Updated: 2018-09-16
Packaged: 2019-07-13 03:22:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16009247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shirokokuro/pseuds/Shirokokuro
Summary: Maybe Dad likes them being worlds apart in the same house, likes the silence and how easy Tim makes it to be ignored, since Tim’s never sure if his blue eyes are a blessing or a curse.More often than not, Tim thinks they’re a curse.





	Marks on Monochrome

Blue eyes.

That’s as far as the similarity goes—as far as Tim can remember Mom anymore.

It’s been a long time. Three years. Maybe more. But long enough to an eight-year-old Tim where seeing photos of Mom are like looking at a stranger, at a ghost or a specter or someone from a dream that he’s never met but somehow must have. The photos wouldn’t be there otherwise.

But Tim doesn’t see the photos anymore. They’re all face-down on nightstands and tables, and there are marks on the walls from hooks that promise memories of frames that once were but aren’t. Dad never gets rid of the pictures; Tim knows as much. They’re an unspoken burden, something no one is forgetting but also isn’t remembering. But at least Dad _has_ memories. The man has to after years of marriage, no matter how rocky that time may have been.

So, Dad has his memories. And Tim has the blue eyes of someone he hardly remembers.

That’s not important, though. Not really.

What’s important is that Dad remembers those eyes and he remembers the person they belong to. They’re Janet’s eyes. They’re his wife’s, and that’s all there should be, but sometimes, they belong to a thing that slips through the halls, shadow-like and elusive as air, as memory, as thieves.

Sometimes, the eyes are someone else’s.

Tim’s.

And _that’s_ what’s important.

Between Tim and Dad, any resemblance is even less apparent, nonexistent: Dad is tall, tough, strong. Tan skin with brown hair and brown irises that have an earthy strength to them, and Tim? Tim is small, a walking silent film made completely of monochrome save the slip of sky that shines from coy eyes. Ultimately, he and Dad are nothing alike, and Tim knows it. Physically. Emotionally. Everything. The divide is so broad that the blood linking them seems insufficient, that they need something more than DNA and an accident to be father and son, because it doesn’t feel like they are.

And maybe that’s how Dad likes it.

Maybe he likes them being worlds apart in the same house, likes the silence and how easy Tim makes it to be ignored, since Tim’s never sure if his blue eyes are a blessing or a curse. More often than not, Tim thinks they’re a curse.

Because before Mom died, Tim was only black and white. Now, there’s grey mixed in, cue marks on old film that splotch what used to be a clean image, brushed on like accidental pencil smudges. _Accidental_. That’s what they are. That’s what’s marring what used to be untouched skin.

They’re all just accidents.


End file.
